Amer­i­can of­fi­cials have long con­sid­ered Huawei, the Chi­nese telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions gi­ant, a se­cu­rity threat, block­ing it from busi­ness deals in the Unit­ed States for fear that the com­pa­ny would cre­ate “back doors” in its equip­ment that could al­low the Chi­nese mil­i­tary or Bei­jing-backed hack­ers to steal cor­po­rate and gov­ern­ment se­crets.
But even as the Unit­ed States made a pub­lic case about the dan­gers of buy­ing from Huawei, clas­si­fied doc­u­ments show that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­rity Agency was cre­at­ing its own back doors — di­rect­ly in­to Huawei’s net­works.